Does Pursuing External Incentives Compromise Public Service Motivation? Comparing the effects of job security and high pay

Abstract

The pursuit of both job security and high pay as main reasons for job selection, according to self-determination theory (SDT), implies that people are controlled by external conditions (i.e. external regulation) and thus unlikely to be driven by altruistic values. Conceptually, however, pursuing high pay and pursuing job security seemingly carry disparate connotations. While the former signifies the love of money, which is thought to be incompatible with public service motivation (PSM), the latter accompanies motivation crowding-in, which may correlate positively with PSM. We tested this proposition by using the data collected from 514 municipal middle managers in Taiwan, and it received strong support. Results further show that pay satisfaction moderates the negative relationship between pursuing high pay and PSM. In the conclusion, we discuss how these findings shed light on contemporary administrative reform.

Key words:

• Pursuing external incentives
• high pay
• job security
• public service motivation

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Taiwan National Science Council for project funding [grant number NSC-96-2414-H-004-037-SS2]; the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange [grant number RG003-D-06]; and the Nanyang Technological University [start-up grant number M4080392]. The authors also thank Dr. Don-Yun Chen at National Chengchi University for making the data available.

Notes

1 Houston (2000) found that government workers are less likely than their enterprise peers to value high income and attributes this finding to civil servants’ high levels of PSM. However, he did not provide further empirical evidence of the crowding-out effect between pursuing pay and PSM. Likewise, Bright (2005) reported a negative relationship between a desire for monetary incentives and PSM, but he did not specify the mechanism leading to this negative relationship. We do not find any study investigating the relationship between a desire for job security and PSM.

2 The incompatibility in SDT can be revealed in the following two aspects. First, there are five motivational styles in SDT, namely internal regulation (doing it because loving it), identified regulation (doing it due to an identified value), introjected regulation (doing it to avoid anxiety or stress), external regulation (doing it to pursue external incentives or avoiding punishments), and amotivation (not being motivated by anything). The first two are considered as autonomous motivation. While PSM is autonomous in nature, pursuing external incentives such as pay and security belongs to external regulation. Two adjacent motivations can be correlated positively, but two distant motivations are likely to be correlated negatively or at least uncorrelated. Therefore, PSM (internal regulation and identified regulation) and pursuing external incentives (external regulation) are likely to be correlated negatively. Second, SDT also shows that the impacts of extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation on a certain behaviour can be accumulative, but such accumulation is not positive, but instead, negative. For example, students can be motivated to study math because (i) they care about their future (identified regulation) and (ii) they are afraid to be punished by their parents (external regulation). The first one is positively related to the involvement in studying, whereas the second one has a negative impact on the involvement in studying. These two motivations can generate an accumulative impact on the involvement of studying, but such accumulative effect is not positive. From this perspective, the compatibility of PSM and pursuing external incentives is not very high.

3 According to Watson, Clark, and Tellegen (1988), positive affect generally includes adjectives such as attentive, interested, alert, enthusiastic, inspired, proud, determined, strong, and active. Negative affect includes adjectives such as distressed, upset, hostile, irritable (angry), scared, afraid (fearful), ashamed, guilty, nervous, and jittery.

4 Public administration scholars also propose the same perspective. In a study of the effects of regulation on work effort of researchers, the authors propose that researchers’ publications grow when they perceive regulations as supportive, but publications decrease when they perceive regulations as controlling (Andersen, Jacobsen, and Möller 2008).

5 The love of money research is quite mature in the generic management literature. According to Tang and Chiu (2003), the construct of the love of money consists of four major factors: importance (e.g. money is important; money is attractive; money is valuable), success (e.g. money represents my achievement; money is how we compare each other), motivator (e.g. I am motivated to work hard for money; money is a motivator), and rich (e.g. I want to be rich; my life would be more enjoyable if I am rich).

6 With the use of cross-sectional data, proving causality is unlikely. We acknowledge this inherent limitation and emphasize that PSM is only ‘correlated with’ (not predicted by) the independent variables included in the present study.

7 We encourage readers to mind the generalizability issue as our sample includes only middle managers.

8 Fit indices reported here are commonly used by researchers. Generally speaking, a combination of CFI > 0.9, RMSEA < 0.8, and SRMR < 0.6 indicates an acceptable fit (Hu and Bentler 1999; McDonald and Ho 2002).

9 In spite of its popularity, Harman’s single-factor test has been criticized by scholars, as it is not a sensitive test (Podsakoff et al. 2003). Passing the test does not guarantee the immunity to common-method bias. However, failing the test indicates that common-method variance is indeed a major problem.

10 The meaning after translation does not deviate from the original design. The literal translation for ‘Most social programs are too vital to do without’ is too awkward, so it was translated as ‘Many public welfare programs are indispensible’ (‘social program’ is too vague in Chinese). The literal translation for ‘I am one of those rare people who would risk personal loss to help someone else’ is awkward too, so it was translated as ‘I would risk my career for the public good of society’. Also, ‘I am prepared to make enormous sacrifices for the good of society’ sounds too strong for Chinese people who highly value ‘modesty’, so it was translated as ‘It is my obligation to sacrifice myself to contribute to the society’.

11 It is worth noting that we conducted a second-order CFA to test if PSM is a formative construct as exemplified by Kim and Vandenabeele (2010). Overall fit indexes (i.e. CFI = 0.942; RMSEA = 0.064; SRMR = 0.053) show that the entire model is within acceptable levels, suggesting that PSM is indeed a combination of attraction to policy making, commitment to the public interest, compassion, and self-sacrifice.

12 The probability–probability plot is approximately linear.

13 VIFs are calculated based on standardized variables. However, we report before-standardization coefficients in Table 2 for readers who are interested in substantive impacts of variables.

14 We graphed the figure using unstandardized coefficients.

15 Kim’s (2009) revised measurement of attraction to policy making includes three items: ‘I am interested in making public programs that are beneficial for my country or community I belong to’; ‘Sharing my views on public policies with others is attractive to me’; ‘Seeing people get benefits from the public program I have been deeply involved in brings me a great deal of satisfaction’.